The biennial Mid-Atlantic Microbial Pathogenesis Meeting (MAMPM) will be held February 12-14, 2017 at the Wintergreen Ski Resort near Charlottesville, VA. The Mid-Atlantic region is defined as North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, The District of Columbia, Delaware, and New Jersey. The Wintergreen Resort was selected because of its central location, its excellent facilities and its professional conference staff. This will be the ninth meeting of the conference and all have taken place at The Wintergreen Resort. During the first eight MAMPM conferences, we have attracted scientists from both within and outside the Mid- Atlantic region, averaging approximately 170 attendees per meeting. The purpose of the conference is to foster communication and collaboration between scientists engaged in microbial pathogenesis research. One of our key goals is to provide students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty with an opportunity to present their work to a knowledgeable audience, focused in their discipline, in a relaxed and collegial environment. Providing such opportunities for young scientists is important for their scientific development and has been one of the most appealing, and positively evaluated, aspects of this conference. The meeting will consist of four sessions over two days. Each session will feature an invited keynote speaker and talks by almost exclusively young principal investigators, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate & undergraduate students drawn from the submitted abstracts. The Organizing Committee has already successfully invited the four keynote speakers (Drs. Darwin, Tsolis, Wardenberg, and Whiteway). Two poster sessions will provide an additional opportunity for participants to present and discuss their work face-to-face. A considerable number of NIH-funded investigators studying the virulence mechanisms of a variety of pathogens of human importance are located in this geographic region and many of these laboratories have been dedicated participants in this meeting. The MAMPM will be publicized through a combination of advertisements in professional publications, direct mailings to relevant departments at academic institutions, government and private laboratories within the region, and to members of the local American Society for Microbiology branches that serve this region. A dedicated website (http://mampm.org/) has been established to publicize the meeting and provide the necessary information and forms required for registration. The MAMPM remains committed to establishing a balanced representation of women, minorities, and persons of disability.